FOUR GO MAD IN THE YORKSHIRE DALES: INVESTIGATING INTERACTIONS ON TABLETOP DISPLAYS

Interactive tabletops are an ideal shared space for collaboration, coordination and problem solving. There is a need to understand how individuals interact with the information that these devices display. This paper presents an exploratory study that looks at the level of detail individuals understand from different types of maps displayed on an interactive tabletop. Participants were asked to collaboratively plan a route between two points according to constraints. Two types of map were used; a direct manipulation map, which used Google Earth and a passive map, which used a zoom-restricted Google Map. Results showed that users who could directly manipulate the map were able to pick out finer details in the environment but also experienced a higher mental workload.